The Adventures of Harley & Scooter

Main menu

Tag Archives: dogs & Xylitol

With beagles, there is always some new act or (mis)behavior we have to train out of them. More often than not, we simply end up adapting to it.

Scooter’s latest thing is jumping up on the dining room table. She is training me to push my chair in. Because if I leave it out, she’ll get up on the table. And if Scooter hears me coming, she will leap off the table (I’d love to get that on film!)

Harley jumped up on the table a few times when we first adopted them, without the use of a chair! But we’ve never caught him doing it since then.

Who gets on top of tables? Not me!

One time, Mike left various vitamins out on the table. He had them segregated into piles by type, and intended to put them in a daily vitamin container. But he got distracted and went off to do something else. We both were at the other end of the house and when I came back into the dining room, I saw several somewhat chewed up multi-vitamins on the floor. Nothing else seemed out of place to me, until Mike came and said that the fish oil pills were missing. All seven of them! It appeared that Scooter had eaten them. We kept a close eye on her that day, but everything seemed normal. Except perhaps her coat was a bit glossier…

Another time we came home to find what was left of gum packages on the dog bed. The plastic wrap had been torn off, and a bunch of pieces of gum had apparently been eaten, but not too many. Again, we watched both dogs closely, but especially Scooter, as she had the freshest breath! Gum can be bad for dogs, especially if it contains the sugar substitute Xylitol (this gum did), which can cause liver failure.

But the strangest item to be taken off the table was a camera memory card, full of pictures from a recent trip to Ethiopia. We don’t know if some salt or sugar that was on the table spilled onto the plastic case that contained the memory card, but regardless, we found a chewed up card on the floor one evening. Luckily for Scooter, the photos had all been downloaded.

Hopefully we can close this chapter of beagle behavior, but we’re not holding our breath! In the meantime, Harley and Scooter have trained us not to leave anything on the dining table.